Disease Ecology & Wildlife Management

Curriculum

This course aims to give aspiring wildlife ecologists, veterinarians and reserve managers experience in engaging in disease research at the interface of wildlife, human and livestock health. Specifically, it seeks to familiarize participants with the fundamentals of disease ecology and teaches relevant field-skills and diagnostic tools using real-life examples from South Africa. The course will begin with a brief review of the fundamentals of biodiversity conservation, the drivers of change in natural ecosystems in southern Africa, and why a holistic framework for understanding disease dynamics is important. To gain practical experience students will assist in analyzing faunal community data, blood and parasite samples and camera trap images collected from across a land-use gradient. Participants will analyze the data and produce a research paper. Students will work independently on sample evaluation, data analysis and report writing.

Learning outcomes 

• Understand the importance of environmental health and conservation in managing diseases in protected areas
• Understand how to capture and sample a variety of wild and domestic vertebrates (including sampling equipment, sample storage and downstream laboratory applications / tests)
• Understand the important role of animal behavior in understanding and managing wildlife diseases
• Insight into the challenges of managing diseases common to wildlife and livestock at the interface between protected and farming areas
• Familiarity with online genomic databases and their applications in disease ecology and diagnostics
• Scientific writing skills and biostatistical analysis

1. Science and Disease Ecology in an African Context

Johannesburg

The course begins in Johannesburg and Pretoria with introductory workshops on the context for animal health in southern Africa, the fundamentals of the challenges facing conservationists and local veterinarians, especially in rural resource-poor areas in a newly industrialized country, as well as the history and culture of South Africa. We will visit the National Zoological Gardens, the Cradle of Humankind and the Onderstepoort Veterinary School.

2. Challenges in Managing Health, Production, and Welfare of Livestock and other Domestic Animals

Kruger National Park and surrounding communities

We will visit and conduct research in the local livestock farming areas to gain insight into some important animal diseases at the wildlife-livestock interface (e.g. rabies and foot-and-mouth disease), associated animal control work, current challenges, and regulatory animal health management. We will collect data on common themes across the land-use gradients. Fieldwork will focus on the impacts of wildlife and livestock on the ecology of the study sites and the diversity of small mammals, and birds inside Kruger Park and in communal rangelands (i.e., areas that have experienced no major anthropogenic landscape alterations but are impacted by livestock grazing and fuelwood collection).

• Additional work outside protected areas may include, but is not limited to, assisting with regular animal vaccinations, animal disease monitoring, especially parasitological monitoring (e.g. assessing ectoparasite burdens, small mammal haemo-parasites, tick load and tick-borne disease), and limited primary animal healthcare.

3. Conservation Areas: Disease Load in Intact Ecosystems

Skukuza, Kruger National Park

Working in relatively intact ecosystems, we explore disease load in small vertebrates and larger ungulates, comparing data from inside and outside protected areas. Additionally, we take advantage of being in close proximity to SANParks veterinary researchers and game capture in Skukuza. Students may engage in post-culling autopsies, assist in game capture of larger ungulates and megaherbivores, long-term monitoring of small vertebrate disease and parasite load, and faecal sampling.